pierrot wrote:So, now I'm playing Front Mission Gun Hazard in earnest, and yeah, it's pretty legit. I am kind of annoyed by the map screen, and how it seems to be almost impossible to select the place I want to go next, sometimes, as well as all the minor damage taken from enemies exploding, and from dashing into walls, but it's going well so far, anyway. I am a little concerned that the gameplay seems very wash-rinse-repeat, and I'm not sure if that will start to feel stale before too long. I'm on the second area after becoming a mercenary, and judging from the other save files on my cartridge, there seems to be four or five more areas after that.

This is my biggest, admittedly small beef with Gun Hazard. I never got to the point where I was bored but it's got the same issue a lot of action games with RPG elements tossed in tend to suffer from. Variety is ultimately why I prefer Valken as a game to Gun Hazard, but the latter still shines in a lot of ways and it's a unique experience.

I'd actually say Gun Hazard is the one with "variety", since it's a huge sprawling RPG and a mix of some genres.

There were tough difficulty spikes early on, but I quickly noticed it's easy to "grind" at the end of levels by just standing around while the enemies repeatedly respawn at the edge of the map right by you, but they eventually stop spawning. So there's always an easy stopping point. Yeah this is fluff but I didn't really mind it. For me Gun Hazard was the sum of all its parts and I loved being in that world, amazing graphics, vibes, and music. Kind of a shame they never made a direct sequel in the same style.

I had an issue with Gun Hazard, that I'm still a little puzzled by. After my last post about it, I went to play it, and all the saves on the cart were wiped clean. It sucked, but I figured that battery simply died, and I would need to change it. I tried just making a new save file anyway, though. After starting a new game, it ended up just bugging out on the part where Ark starts his last bit of dialogue on the opening stage of the game, and reset back to the initial power on state. I tried it again, and was able to get past that part, and make a save, which did end up sticking. I think it was a bit later that I started up another entirely new game, and flew through to the section I was at when I lost my previous save file, in only a couple hours. I finished that second set of mercenary missions, and moved on to the last of the initial three. I'm not liking these missions much, though. The stages are pretty simple, but then there's bosses at the end that can just obliterate me, and won't go down for anything. I was initially having trouble with Camilla, who pilots a flying horse penis with an articulated mini-gun attachment. She uses the tip like a battering ram, which is devastating when hit by (and I'm using the second body, plus the metal plating attachment), but usually not too difficult to avoid. Except for the occasions where she's off screen, and seems like she's going to swoop in low, but stays high, and just kills me. This happened to me twice, when it was looking like I was going to be able to actually finish her. It's like a three to six minute fight, on top of a couple minutes to work through the main part of the stage, so it was pretty annoying having to redo it so many times. I was able to work out her pattern after a little while, but having to restart the entire mission to do so is a pain.

I don't really understand why all the partners are so useless, either. I've been trying to take Emille along, where I can, in order to get him experience for if he actually becomes useful at some point, but he's too stupid to not get killed by bosses. A couple times, I took him with me on that mission, because I thought he would be able to dodge the attacks, too, if I just made the jumps a little bit earlier. Except, he just keeps hovering back and forth, above me, without landing, which then leads him to slam himself repeatedly into Camilla's battering ram.

So, I eventually made it through that ordeal, only to be taking on the maze tank in the center of the desert, which I spent probably a good 45 minutes or more on, making sure I had checked every last spot for items. I fulfill the main objective, and get out of the tank, when Albert has the great idea, 'No, we're not leaving. I need to fight these frame trapping, super weapons mounted on the top of this thing,' and I am thinking, 'What!? No! Leave you fool!' Unsurprisingly Emille and I were both bodied by this thing. It gave me very little time to actually figure out how to deal with it, and I don't even know if I was actually dealing damage. It's absurd, and I was hopeful that it would at least start me back at the beginning of the fight, if I chose to restart, but it did not. It expected me to go through the entire thing again. I'm not sure if I'm more unhappy about my first save being deleted, or that tank stage. It's pretty close to even right now, but--.

EDIT: Well, I finished that mission in the dumbest fashion possible. Took forever, but I just stood in the corner, jumping over the floor lasers, which made me safe against the vulcan bullets, and fired off my weapons where possible, while making sure to get rid of the fluttery robots that drop bombs. Still hate that they made me do that, and where are these cheap weapons the resistance leader was telling me about! I have seen no shops here, or in the ARS base, and it's pissing me off.

On another front, I finally finished Shin Megami Tensei if... on the Super Famicom. At least, I finished one route (with Yumi), of four, apparently. I didn't realize that it was October of 2017 when I started it. I was sort of sure that I had started it last year some time. Anyway, the main thing that kept me away was the third realm (the Sloth Realm), where the game basically forces you to just waste time for about eight cycles of the moon phase. It's extremely obnoxious, and when I had initially put my play on hold, I didn't really know if I was really supposed to do that, or not. The game does a really poor job of indicating that there's actually any sort of progress being made. So, that was an abject disaster, from a design perspective. I understand that they were playing up the point of persistence being the medicine for slothfulness, but it was just a terrible idea, and a really poorly executed one, at that. I didn't care much for the Envy Realm, either, where the game was constantly taking away my vision, and often not allowing me to use the COMP/Map. It really only took me about three sessions with the game to finish this route, from the point where I picked back up from in the Sloth Realm, though. Although that third session consisted of most of my Saturday. I found out that I made the easy Musou Masamune unobtainable for that play through, so I spent most of that time yesterday making one from scratch, and a few of the monsters I need were being a real pain about joining me.

I'm really glad to have this one finished. It's an okay game, but not really what I would expect from a MegaTen. The guardian system is really dumb, because you almost have to suicide all the time to take advantage of it. Yumi ended up with a pretty short list of spells because I really only ever had a couple guardians for her, and changing out guardians is the only way the partners gain spells. Fortunately the ones she had were enough to get me through most situations, with some monsters to cover for her deficiencies. For guardians, I ended up with Lakshmi on Yumi, and Hanuman on my main character, though. Also, there doesn't seem to be any sort of alignment based endings, and the main characters don't even seem to have alignment that isn't "party alignment," that's set by the alignment of the monsters in the active party.

In summary, don't bother with this game. The story is pretty much a waste, unless you like being lectured on the seven deadly sins, and a couple things about it make it a chore to play. Just play DDS: MegaTen, or SMT instead. Leave if... to the nutterbutters who want to clear Akira's route, and grind out sword-monster melds ad infinitum.

pierrot wrote:So, now I'm playing Front Mission Gun Hazard in earnest, and yeah, it's pretty legit. I am kind of annoyed by the map screen, and how it seems to be almost impossible to select the place I want to go next, sometimes, as well as all the minor damage taken from enemies exploding, and from dashing into walls, but it's going well so far, anyway. I am a little concerned that the gameplay seems very wash-rinse-repeat, and I'm not sure if that will start to feel stale before too long. I'm on the second area after becoming a mercenary, and judging from the other save files on my cartridge, there seems to be four or five more areas after that.

This is my biggest, admittedly small beef with Gun Hazard. I never got to the point where I was bored but it's got the same issue a lot of action games with RPG elements tossed in tend to suffer from. Variety is ultimately why I prefer Valken as a game to Gun Hazard, but the latter still shines in a lot of ways and it's a unique experience.

Mario's pantomiming was one of my least favorite things about the game

How do you hate one of the best parts of the game?

For some reason I almost read this as "platforming" instead of "pantomiming" - which has brought me out to say - fuck the platforming parts in that game. There is something about the depth perception that makes me have no clue where I am going to land in Super Mario RPG.

So I spent about half an hour or so with Etrian Odyssey Nexus last night (I'll get back to it this weekend); just enough to register my guild and start exploring the labyrinth. It's definitely a greatest hits compilation of the game. Aside from the new Hero class, all the classes come from the other games (and indeed, the narrative has adventurers from all the other cities coming to this one). The game uses EO4's skill and subclass system; the tree is divided into three tiers, with you needing to progress to a certain point (either level or story, not sure which yet) to get to the next tier. Subclassing gives you 5 skill points and the tree and weapons of a second class; this tree has all its nodes only supporting half the number of skill points as a primary class. The item system is from EO5; you can forge your weapons with the same materials used to purchase it to give it a +, capping at +5, and you can break down a +5 weapon to get materials which can be built up and then used to add a + to a weapon without needing the specific materials for that weapon (so ideal for boss drop weapons).

One new thing they've done is there is a menu-based world map. The first two intro quests introduce you to the combat and the event system without putting you in a labyrinth; instead you visit a couple nodes on the world map to trigger them. Then the third intro quest is the one that unlocks your first labyrinth (and you go to a point inside it to complete the quest). It's clear that there is going to be more than one labyrinth that you will visit on this map, rather than one giant labyrinth. So more EO4 style without the grid based world navigation.

Games Beaten: 2015201620172018Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.